Curiosity, not necessity, is the mother of invention! Your creative brain reaches out into the world, sees something that surprises it, and that kick-starts the creative process. 
As we get older, we learn to screen out surprises and focus on the patterns that help us to succeed at basic tasks. That's very practical--and awful for our creativity. So here are a few ways you can get your curiosity up and running again.
1. Find three things to ask "why" about, every day. Remember how you drove the grownups crazy with this question, way back when? Drive yourself crazy with it, and you'll regain some of that childhood wonder.
2. Use more of your senses to observe the world. If you're a primarily visual person, use your ears. If you're a primarily auditory person, use your nose. You get the idea. By bringing new information to your brain, you will automatically stimulate its curiosity.
3. Take your head out of the google-verse and start learning from your own experience. Doing it yourself means no more fast answers; instead, you'll have to live with ambiguity. Since ambiguity can be frustrating, that puts your curiosity in the driver's seat.
4. Ask other people what they think about the world. You may be surprised at the diversity of opinion around you. If so, you will become more curious about your options and the way different people think.
5. Change a habit. If you always take the same way to work, choose a different route. Be curious about it. If you always eat the same kind of food, try a different kind. Be curious about that! The point is to change something and let that stimulate your curiosity.
6. Learn something new. This is just plain good for your brain and your personality. Take up the guitar, and then get curious about the history of guitars and guitar music. Study a language, and then get curious about the history of its native speakers. Learning is fun, it makes you smarter, and it kick-starts your creative brain.
Brains are amazing! They grow and change throughout your whole life. Every single time you are creative, play with ideas, or learn something new, your brain grows.
Of course, the other side of that is that your brain won't grow unless you keep on learning, creating, and playing. Unfortunately, brains are also prone to locking you in to repetitive patterns. Those unquestioned assumptions? those daily patterns you can't break? all of those characteristics you defend by saying "that's just the way I am"? Those are mental habits. They keep your brain smaller and, let's just say, flabbier than it ought to be.
Looked at that way, our creativity is the engine of brain health. It's creativity that lets you learn, that encourages you to explore and form new ideas, all of which are excellent brain exercise. There's even evidence that exercising the brain can help prevent loss of brain function later in life. If you nurture and enjoy your creativity, you could have a happier, healthier life long into your old age.
So get out there and play! It's good for you.
I love this science! For many years, I have known that when I am facing a frightening or stressful situation, forcing a smile helps me to relax. What science has discovered is that smiling also has specific effects on the way your brain deals with errors.
A very thorough (and completely humorless) study involving people holding pens in their mouths in various positions showed that those who held the pen in a "smile" position had very different responses to making mistakes. Basically, they didn't care much. They felt good, happy, at peace with the world. They were high on dopamine, the reward system of the brain.
Is unconcern about errors a good thing? It is when you're facing a creative hurdle. One of the difficulties of creativity is tolerating the risk of failure. Your brain's danger alerts may lead you to quit before you solve a problem if (as is likely) the path to a solution involves makng mistakes before you reach your goal.
Inhibition around making mistakes is important when you're driving, taking a test, or balancing your checkbook. So don't knock it. But when you're free-associating, opening your mind to intuition, or playing with an idea, errors don't matter. In that early phase of the creative process (the "open phase"), all ideas are equal. Making judgements comes later, during the "closed" phase. Then, error detection is very helpful. Feel free to frown, purse your lips, or be stone-faced.
When you're coming up with ideas, though, force a smile. It doesn't matter how you're really feeling, the smile will clear the way for your brain's creative capacity. You can say the letter "e", or hold a pencil in the right position between your teeth, whatever works for you (that should make you giggle). Just smile!
